Baking bread in an outdoor baking oven about 1650. (Conjectural sketch by Sidney E. King.)
In this oven a Jamestown woman baked bread over 300 years ago. It appears to have been in use between 1650 and 1690.
Jamestown soldiers carrying polearms (a halberd and a bill). (Conjectural sketch by Sidney E. King.)
Military Equipment
The vast assemblage of military equipment that has been unearthed (probably the largest collection of late 16th-and 17th-century English weapons used in America) emphasizes the important part which firearms and other weapons played during the early years of the settlement. They helped the colonists to protect themselves from the ever-menacing Indian and from the Spaniards who might at anytime have sailed up the James River to attack the small colony. They were also the means of providing the settlers with much of their food.
During the early years of the colony each Englishman who planned to emigrate to Virginia was advised to supply himself with the following “Armes”:
- “One Armour compleat, light.
- One long Peece, five foot or five and a halfe, neere Musket bore.
- One sword.
- One bandaleere
- Twenty pound of powder.
- Sixty pound of shot or lead, Pistoll and Goose shot.”
Most of the kinds of arms listed have been found at Jamestown and will be described briefly along with other types of weapons which were unearthed.